Occupy Gezi background: archaeology and the struggle for justice

Next week, over on (un)free archaeology, there will be a week of posts on the free archaeologists’ revolution in Turkey, including the relationship between the illegally-forced unemployment of archaeologists and the destruction of cultural property. This week, I’ve posted tl;dr background posts on the protests and their repression; the protesters and their politics; and the archaeology of Gezi Park, including the deliberate lack of archaeological work and the (non-)(re-)memorialisation of the Armenian Genocide. In the archaeological backgrounders, I look at Occupy Gezi’s use of historic sites to reveal hidden histories and struggle for justice.

model civil resistance: citizens against the state in Gola Çetu and Gezi Park

Over on (un)free archaeology, I’ve looked at civil resistance against dam projects in Turkey. I don’t detail cultural destruction through dam construction, but I do explore how archaeologists’ unemployment is enforced in order to enable development projects and their consequent destruction.

Occupy Gezi: a summary of the origins and development of the protests

The situation just gets worse. Even the international media practically ignored (what my friends and friends of friends described as) ‘heavy, brutal repression’, ‘police terror’ in Ankara and elsewhere while it dined off İstiklal and partied in Taksim, but now that literally lawless violence has returned to Istanbul too. People fear even more vicious violence: a few days ago, I drafted that there were ‘horrified whispers of civil war’ amongst my friends; now, it’s nonchalant newspaper comment.